If Only
by TJ-TeeJay
Summary: An excursion into Gary's mind... This is something, I can't even begin to describe. Read for yourself. Written in 1998. COMPLETE.


**Author's Note:**  
Time for some more philosophical ramblings... This is something, I can't even begin to describe. I don't know if you can call it fan fiction, but since it's written by a fan and since it is fiction, I think it would probably still fall under that category. It's a little unusual nevertheless...

And I don't know what hit me when I "produced" it. These are the things you start doing when you're trying to get into the chatroom you've been in for the last 30 minutes and the server won't let you reconnect 'cause some bozos think they have to play around and do server updates. Ah well... sigh> Nothing like writing a little fan fic to occupy your mind with... I bet most of my fellow writers agree... :o)

This thing hasn't been beta-ed since I don't think it's worth beta-ing... It's quite short and more like a I'd-better-send-it-off-before-anyone-tells-me-it's-not-worth-it story... I don't even know if it makes sense... ;o) I know, it's probably _really_ not worth posting but I can't withhold it from you, can I?

Okay, before the introduction gets longer than the piece itself, I'd better show you my creation.

Yadda yadda yadda (said in a Scully "Bad Blood" voice) situations and characters belong to yadda yadda yadda. You know the drill... Actually I'm not sure if I really need this here, for reasons you'll see when you read my piece... But anyway, before I get sued...

--...----...----...--

If only...

_by TeeJay_

--...----...----...--

There was no way he could pull it off like this! Nothing, not even the powers that be could help him now. Cursing the very object of his every day misery was going nowhere. _There's no point in this!_ he thought furiously. He didn't have the slightest clue as to what he was supposed to do. He needed to try. _Yeah, try._ Hah, easier said than done.

What should he do? What the hell should he do? It was not like he was confronted with impossible tasks every day but sometimes there were. And sometimes - no, not sometimes - almost every time, he had felt he had made the wrong choice when it came to these decisions. Doing what he could was often not enough. At least he felt that way. Much _too_ often, for his taste.

No matter how many times they had told him that it wasn't his fault, that he couldn't be expected to carry the whole world on his shoulders, it didn't sink in. It made sense, though. But every time he saw one of those haunted images before him, one of those horrible tragedies he hadn't been able to take care of, all sense vanished from those words. _Sense. Making sense._ What did that mean anyway? In _his_ life nothing made sense anymore. There had once been a time when his life had made sense. At least he used to think so. Until that fateful day. He could recall it vividly. But he tried hard not to. Very hard.

Sometimes he wasn't sure if he didn't enjoy the life he was leading. What would he do if they took that away from him? It was all a mystery to him. And not only to him. _No one_ knew why they had chosen him and how exactly it all worked. But maybe that was the way it was supposed to be. Yeah, on second thoughts that was _exactly_ the way it was supposed to be. And maybe in that also lay the reason why _he_ had been chosen.

This was how it was and how it would always be. Always? He couldn't go on like this forever, could he? Did he want to? No, that was the wrong question. If he wanted to or not had never mattered. He hadn't had a choice in this, from the very first moment on. He had never asked for this and they had never asked his opinion. Would he have said 'no' if they had? That was a good question. But the wrong one, too. He couldn't pine about would-bes and what-ifs. This is how it was and this is how it would be. Hadn't he heard that before?

_It's no big deal,_ he had tried to tell himself. I'm just doing my job. Like everyone else. Only - mine is a little different. Very different. One could even say unique. But who knows, maybe there were more people out there like him. Maybe one in every city. He couldn't believe he was the only one on the whole planet with a responsibility like this.

Sometimes he felt very alone. It was not like no one cared about what he was doing, it was the insight people lacked. You couldn't talk about the aesthetics of colors to someone who had been blind his whole life. Sometimes he wished for someone who had exactly the same problems as he had. Someone to pour his whole-hearted accumulated misery out to. Someone who truly understood. Sure, he had friends to talk to. But they could never understand the full meaning of it. That could only someone who had been through every miserable and very last shred of it. Was there someone else out there at all? He didn't know.

Oh, there had been moments, plenty of them, when he had cursed the whole thing to hell. Moments at which he had thought he couldn't take it any longer. Moments when he would have given up everything gladly and with every piece of his heart. And he had tried to. Tried to ignore everything that came with it. It hadn't left him alone. It hadn't even once granted his wishes. Well, why should it? Sometimes he thought it was doing it on purpose, just to annoy him. To mock him, to scare the living day-lights out of him.

He was tired. Tired of the demands that were imposed on him. Each and every day. Not one day off. Not _one!_ How often had he prayed for a day off. To be left alone just one _single_ day. He sighed and turned in his bed, adjusting his pillow, hoping the insomnia would eventually be replaced by sleep. Maybe tomorrow would be his day off. Maybe...

THE END.


End file.
